gU13 24-Nov-07: Stockport County 16-1 Oswald Rd (HT 7-0)

Today we lost. But who cares? The last time we were against this team we lost by 30 goals. But this time we didn't. This time we lost by… wait for it… 15 goals. (They scored 16 goals). That's only 1 more goal then half our last score against them. This was a major improvement considering we only had 7 players and it was bitterly cold. The last time we had played Stockport we had 8 players. Before this actual match though we had thought we had 9 players. But on Thursday Shay rang and said she couldn't come to training or the match because she was ill. Great we had 8. No worse then before. But then waiting at Oswald primary my dad rang Tara and it turned out she was ill too. We didn't exactly care. We had played with 7 players the week before as well. We hadn't lost too badly then. Even managed 2 goals. This match we hoped for the best…

1^st Half

In the first half they scored their first in less then 3 minutes. It was a stupid goal too. But we hadn't expected to win and didn't really care. We battled on for the rest of the half and ended it with the score 7-0. We hadn't scored any goals but we were still only in the 1^st half. We left the pitch cold and not bothered.

2^nd Half

The second half we let in 9 more goals but we swore we only saw 4 go in. (We did really let in 9). We put Katie in goal and Becks in Mid-Defence. In this half we played SO much better. Sometime near the end of the game Katie had passed it out to me. I then passed it to Kenesha in our half who ran all the way to their goal and got the ball past the goalie. At the end of the match we were just happy we scored a goal against them. The score was 16-1 to them! Which is, I suppose, half the amount we lost by before!!!

Ruqayyah

We expected this to be our first game with a full team – Rudi and Roisin (pronounced Rosheen) have just signed up for the team and although Rudi was away that left us with 9 players. Then Shaye didn’t come to training on Thursday as she was coming down with something and her Mum texted on Friday evening to say that she still wasn’t better. That left us with 8. On Saturday morning we were all at the school early (kickoffs was at 11:00, much earlier than normal) – except for Tara. Unusual, I thought, she’s usually on time or early. So I rang her home … a sister replied – Tara was sick as well! I myself wasn’t feeling too good and now I was feeling worse. So… off we went to Stockport’s home ground in Bredbury.

And then there were seven. The Sickly Seven? The Sorrowful Seven? The Sleepy Seven? No! More like the Super Seven! The Stupendous Seven! The Sizzling Seven! Stockport were a little shocked at the end of the first half – they’d won the toss and swapped ends so that we were playing into the wind and slightly uphill but they only finished 7-0 up! Amazing. Especially as some of the goals were scrambled in or scored straight from mis-kicked goal kicks. It should have been only 4-0. However, the Ozzies only made occasional forays into the Stockport half as they kept us pinned back for most of the half.

Stockport woke up in the second half and scored some very good goals – excellent passing and running off the ball to setup good shots into goal. We put Katie into goal and swapped Becky into midfield. Katie played her best ever half as a goalie – better than Becky’s half for the first time. Sure she let in goals but they were well struck goals, well out of her reach. However, Katie has a great kick and we started getting the ball out of our half more regularly. Becky played excellently with good positional sense and speedy runs always taking two or three Stockport players to stop her. The Ozzies tried their best but there were too many to mark even for Sophie and Stockport were passing the ball about really well. However the players didn’t care too much, they were on another mission – to score a goal against Stockport. We tried a few times but Stockport have fast defenders (and a very annoyingly good no. 9 and no. 6 as well) and a good goalie. Our new player, Roisin, played really well in her first ever game, showing good ball control and going on a couple of runs. Zoe was playing really well, getting some good tackles in and also always trying to attack. Finally, in the 25^th minute, Katie threw the ball out to Ruqayyah who controlled the high ball well, went past one player and saw Kenesha going mad in front of her. So Ruq passed the ball down the line to Kenesha who set off like Jesse Owens, got the ball, whizzed past 100 players (OK I may exaggerate a little) and smacked the ball into the net past the goalie. A goal!!! All in all, an excellent game, and we learnt a lot from it. Stockport are a good team to play against as they’re so good but friendly and not nasty so we learn a lot from them. Their match report is at http://www.stockportcountyladies.com/NewsItem.aspx?id=70 along with a match picture.

Kamal

Goals: 2^nd half: Kenesha (Ruqayyah) 25’
Opposition’s Player of the Match: Katie Shaw
Managers’ Player of the Match: Oswald Rd (yes, all of them again)
Team: (fwd) Zoë(c) (mid) Kenesha, Roisin (def) Ruqayyah, Katie, Sophie, (gk) Rebecca